


Semantics

by blackholesDWN



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Discussion of Mental Healing Progression, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Forehead Touching, I went hard with the domestic fluff b/c a bitch be needy, Light Angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues, No Plot/Plotless, No Smut, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Nudity, Persona 5 Spoilers, Touchy-Feely, akeshu - Freeform, ft. existential nostaligic Akira and way too much characters analysis, persona 5 royal spoilers, shower thoughts, shuake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:40:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24903211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackholesDWN/pseuds/blackholesDWN
Summary: "Were you not just drooling all over my naked back while I handled your chore like some dull housewife, not thirty seconds ago?"Akira thinks too much in the shower, and is very in love.(Re-Uploaded on 06/24/2020)
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 17
Kudos: 174





	Semantics

**Author's Note:**

> 06/24/2020 This is re-uploaded from a different account. That account is still active but I've decided it's to be SFW, for my mother's sake. This story is very mild but to be safe. 
> 
> Find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/blackholesdwn) (nsfw!) (〃ﾉωﾉ).

He watched water swirl down the drain and Akira smiled at the idea of being able to actually shower everyday. He didn't think about it too often, but the bathhouse experience in high school, while a treat, was such a hassle. Being able to shower in his own apartment whenever he wanted was much nicer.

There were rare few sights Akira considered himself … privileged to have seen in his youth. (That ‘s… not the right word, he thought, as shampoo ran off his hands. He couldn’t placed the weird emotion that a stupid, everyday shower, caused to surge through his heart.)

Not that he was ancient now. Far from it at twenty five, but considering everything that happened in junior and senior years of high school, he might as well call it youth. Being chosen as a wild card and tasked with Tokyo's safety against the suddenly real, sick, twisted, desires of adults and gods who should have known better than teenagers? Stressful. With seven other stupid teenagers and a “cat?” More than once? It was any wonder his hair stayed black. He slicked the curled mess back to squeeze the water out. He sometimes woke up and wondered if today would be the day someone ripped reality to shreds and he would be Joker again. He still saw the Velvet Room in Shibuya; it was a possibility he retained quietly in the corner of his mind.

But he guessed it was a privilege to have been Joker. It was something his long ago sixteen year old teenager could have barely imagined until it happened. Most mornings now he woke up grateful he experienced it, but that it seemed to be just that. He didn't long to reclaim it as if it had been the height of his glory. He knew better than that. Didn't want to risk creating his own palace now, did he? He'd been through enough therapy by now to know staying in the present was best. There was more to life than anyone’s experiences as a teenager, and if he really was privileged, his adult life would be peaceful.

Not that he didn’t enjoy it. He never quite understood how the call was made, but it was a privilege to be chosen as a wildcard.

To go a little feral, be a little dramatic in the way he couldn’t that night. To kick ass and be kick ass. To meet the thieves and others who “shared his aesthetics.” To have tangoed with monsters in both the cognitive world and real life. To have experienced the beauty in each palace, despite the heinous reasons behind their creations. (He would never divulge to Ann and Ryuji that sitting on the roof of Kamoshida's castle had brought the first bit of peace he'd been seeking since the night he first “met” Shido Masayoshi. It was a disgusting ugly disease he sat on, but overlooking the stormy, purple, sunset that surrounded it was stunning. It matched how he felt about life at the time.)

It felt like an absolute privilege he was allowed to tear the palaces down.

He didn’t miss mementos. It was a privilege to have lodged a very real bullet in the head of a false god using the antithesis of it's own self flaunted creation.

A privilege to end Maruki’s deluded, power hungry, hypocrisy. To help Goro Akechi. Even if it had all been a dream, and even if therapy afterwards was necessary to sort his mind when he went home.

He felt the first sprinkling of chilly water leak through the shower head, and decided to move along, before it got cold. Akira turned the shower off and began to towel dry.

Not that it was much help when he came back to an Idol Palace wrecked Shibuya for summer break, and the cycle continued. He had always felt, at the time, that his role as Joker had been cut short before everything had been put into place. He hadn't been asking for a sugar sweet happy ending, just all the possibilities tied off, however messy.

It had been messy. But he got it. And more therapy.

Which was a privilege, to have a real and capable adult without delusions of grandeur sort out his mind, and a mess of experiences that shouldn't have been placed on a teenager just initially concerned with studies, a few extracurriculars, and sorting out the feelings he had for both the girl and the boy in his maths group. Before Shido. Before anything.

Maybe the word he was looking for was lucky.Or blessed. If he believed in a benevolent god that gave blessings. So privileged? There was more to it than that, but that word was stuck rattling around his head.

As he finished drying off, he thought about how Goro would probably have a better word for the feelings he had at the moment. He applied a little lotion to where white scars still shone on ribs, and felt privileged that time passed, wounds healed and faded, and brought with them good things.

He stepped across the hall to the bedroom, and felt the best privilege of all.

Akira had a bad habit of going to the laundry, bringing it home, and dumping it all on the bed. To be fair - he hadn't had to put it away properly in high school, and it was a lazy habit he had yet to shake. He didn't see too much wrong with it.

Especially when it prompted Goro to climb out of bed and sort it. And especially when he had gone to sleep last night without wearing anything and hadn't showered yet.

His therapist told him that the way he phrased it was problematic, but truth be told, Goro murdered him everyday just by looking at him. Shot through not with a gun, but with the privileged knowledge that at least once during the day, Goro would grace him with his voice, an opinion, a challenge, for sure at least one eye roll. But also small smiles and maybe kiss him, maybe just lean back into him, maybe let Akira take his hands and guide them over their skin and scars, reminding him that it was okay to have, to want and to receive, and to touch and to feel and to be…

The best part of his present privilege was that Goro Akechi loved him back. That he was alive, freed, and standing naked in front of their bed, sorting stupid clothing.

Akira had never both hated, yet loved, the necessity of clothing in that moment.

He channeled old phantom thief stealth as he watched the other in almost silence to appreciate how privileged he was that he was the only one that Goro let him see bared. No makeup, no masks, no personas.

He was bent slightly, folding pants, having already stacked shirts to the side. If his eyes didn’t murder Akira, then Goro’s plush ass could definitely put him in a solid coma. But pretty much equal was his back, bared to him in an absolute trust each had sought when gods brought their lives into an absolute hell. That back was currently straightening up and untucking an inside out pant leg. Shoulders spoke of years of his bouldering habits, of cycling, of maintaining appearances. Of therapy finally allowing them to drop and relax once in a while, to feel safe, to reveal the freckles from his foreign mother. To allow him to love her for all she had done right. To forgive himself from where she and others went wrong. Long legs that went on forever. Hair rarely cut, and gathered into a loose bun at the back of his head. Knife cuts and burns now white. A few bullet holes now a light pink. They took forever to heal. But they healed.

"You know,” he began, derailing Akira’s train of thought. “I was a Phantom Thief too, however briefly. You’ve been standing there for quite a few minutes. Plus your sighing over my being naked is giving you away."

"Can you blame me?" Akira replied in the next heartbeat.

"I'm sure someday you will come to your senses and realize there are many other people more attractive than me. Especially since I’m destined to worry lines and hair loss." Goro turned around, an annoyed look in his eyes. It didn't last. They quickly drifted down over Akira’s own form, his own healing wounds, the sharp firework of his perterbance softening to embers when eyes came back to meet his own.

Akira retracted his previous statement.

The pierce of those crimson eyes was all he needed in life to get his heart pumping. No lethal wound would stop it as long as he knew Goro would look at him like that.

That thought prompted another sigh to escape his mouth. He must be really head over heels if it was escaping his careful notice. Though he might have exaggerated it a little bit on purpose.

"You're being ridiculous," Goro scoffed.

"I love you." Akira said, and Goro crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, but he smiled, a little. Akira moved closer, wrapped his own arms around Goro's neck and nuzzled into it. .

"Gross, Akira. I haven’t showered yet,” but he made no move to pull back, showing solid progress.

"You always smell good," Akira countered, insistent and pressing his full body against Goro's, who took a deep breath and let his arms drop and wrapped around his waist in defeat, holding tight.

"Now what did the nice doctor say about the compulsion to lie and give people unnecessary compliments?" Goro reminded him with a hand sneaking into Akira’s hair.

"Mmmmm,” Akira enjoyed the warmth wrapped around him and scratching at his crown. “Not lying. Besides what did she say about comparing yourself to an unnecessary genetic bond when it comes to your personal appearance?"

"Mmmmm. Touché, I guess. Does that mean you'll still say it when I'm bald and can't get away with contacts anymore?"

"Pfft. Sure, if my loving your appearance means that much to you."

"Were you not just drooling all over my naked back while I handled your chore like some dull housewife, not thirty seconds ago?" Goro was using one finger to trace muscle and scar lines along Akira’s lower back, communicating the feeling was mutual.

"Well, yeah. But I kept a respectable distance like a good adult because that’s not all I love about you."

"Your current pressing against me like a horny teenager could prove otherwise."

"You were the one that checked me out after turning around. We could mess around like horny teenagers if you want."

Goro snorted. He kissed the top of Akira’s head. "Not if you’re still determined to watch Ryuji’s student’s races today."

"I know, I was just feeling the banter. I'm not in that kind of mood anyway."

"What kind of mood are you in?"

"Hmmm. I don't know. It’s a little bothersome."

"You don't know? Do we need to identify it?" Goro asked carefully, in case a guided mental health conversation was imminent. Akira sighed at how well Goro took care of him.

"No, I'm good I'm just..." Akira shrugged his shoulders. "Don't know what to call this train of mood."

"Hmmm."

"Think you know what to call it?"

Here Akira lifted his head and rested it against Goro's who had his eyes closed in thought. What a walking cliche, if both hands weren't wrapped around his waist, one would be at his chin unprompted. It made Akira snort, and drop his eyelids closed to think too, as if Goro could read his mind like this.

"Is it not just a generic 'in love' then?"

"That's part of it. It’s you, but also everything from those years. Showering in a real shower prompted some... nostalgia."

"But it's not just nostalgic?"

"No. It's good and bad things, but like…it’s not making me upset. I’m glad things happened the way they did."

"Appreciative." Akira opened his eyes.

"Yes that's it."

"You're appreciative?" Goro’s gaze met his own and Akira leaned back a little to see him properly.

"Of everything. Of everything that's happened to me. To you. To bring me to this present."

"Hmmf, sure. I’d just call you spoiled because you tend to get what you want and somewhere in there I got caught in the crossfire.” Goro pulled away a bit. “But appreciative works too." Akira could feel him tense and think, _but I’m not_. Akira felt the feeling of appreciation widen, eager to include Goro in it before he could get away with his bad habit of not saying what he needed to.

“That's actually pretty close to the word I thought of honestly, that I thought I was using wrong." He spoke quickly, to pique Goro’s curiosity. He leaned into Goro’s hold, prompting the other man to follow suit and quickly re-relax.

Goro sighed. "You know me too well. What was the word?"

"Privileged."

"... I suppose, given the context, that is also correct."

"But I think you are very right.” Akira said, knowing Goro appreciated that little turn of phrase. “I am very spoiled. I’m appreciative. Of everything that happened.” His voice went especially quiet and he hugged Goro a little harder, tucking back into his neck. “But especially of you. I love you."

Goro hid his face in Akira’s hair, and it was silent for awhile. Akira scratched and pet at his hairline, and let him sort through his thoughts.

"... I have another word." Goro said after a while.

"Okay?" Akira prompted. He opened his eyes to meet crimson gone soft, like a plush blanket.

"Tender?" Goro asked, searching Akira’s equally soft gray eyes.

"Hmmm. Yes. Tender. How are you so good at reading me?" Akira asked.

"Because I feel the same." Goro brushed careful lips across his. Akira felt ten degrees warmer, heart slowed to a crawl as he felt Goro's do the same, sharing a contented full kiss. Akira undid Goro's hair so it could fall around him, and Akira could tuck it behind his ears and cradle his face.

Goro broke away first, with a shaky sigh.

"You okay?" Akira asked, checking in. Sometimes the slower, physical and more emotionally charged intimacy shook his partner, and he needed space. Akira couldn't blame him.

Goro just gripped tighter and nestled their heads together so that his face was in Akiras neck this time. Akira ran his hands through Goro's hair.

"I love you." Goro said.

"I know." Akira replied.

**Author's Note:**

> And then because Akechi is a star wars nerd he dies from Akira's reply and haunts him for the rest of his days as a force ghost.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who left kudos and comments on this before! I <3 U:
> 
> "bluebellsandjasper, Natchumelon, peardrops, Recesskup, DualStructure, London_Fog, OdeliaFleur, reywritesfics, getlostinsauce, LovelyLotus, cowboycosmico, zuccin, Moreithel, Lorensy, Qwerty_from_Wilde, Solenza, noire06, octorina, dumbacery, Marivee, halbhartzig, Niji_4140712, randompersonontheinternet, StitchinSprite, koukatsu, Gxbriel, njorunszeal, Prince_Noctis, 3musketears, strangelysweet, ImJustHereForLily, Chiraira, Princessstarwtcher, knightemperor, Ginseng89, BlueCherii, sunlighterasure, sakira35, Bunk_o, Shoeshine, midnight_penguins, TFG, akechisthickass, Kanecute, uselessbian, DiteVia, bulletproofanxiety, EmpatheticFox, Kairi_of_Knives, geaminne, yuui1010, gb_9, fAnGrEll_sTar, Nicoleispurple, Kanelis, kaemaki, floren8, Kot, saigonosefirosu, Luvisco, werehogdog, Hellianthus, chaoticroan, IamAmazing326, AimlesslyHunting, kailyncipher, mayusuki, turnipheadkun, lets_say_maybe, Kabaitan, camarillacake, Toxapex, SoupDumpling, sakaamotos, Rayliria, glancenuggets, InStiches, KURUSUMIYAS, Ninjagirl27, Prompt_Master, so_soft_boy, Lanzelotti and sxnshinenova as well as 50 guests left kudos on this work!"
> 
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